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Religious Contacts, Student Volunteers Find Themselves in Midst of Mental Health Crisis

From Grady Newsource

Rylie Hamilton meets on Tuesday evenings with three female University of Georgia students to discuss a range of topics, from spirituality to navigating the dating sphere to test anxiety. Mental health is frequently part of the conversation.

A 12-year-old killed herself at a Spokane hospital that recently closed its youth psychiatric unit

From InvestigateWest

A12-year-old girl died by suicide this month after workers say she was left unsupervised at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, where she was waiting for a long-term psychiatric placement.

Language lives on for tribes in Oklahoma despite determined erasure attempts

From KOSU

More than a century after U.S. Indian boarding schools attempted to erase Indigenous cultures and languages, tribal nations in Oklahoma are working to reclaim and teach their languages to the youth. Despite research showing how language learning can improve mental health outcomes, world language credits are not required for graduation following recent state legislation.

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West Virginia’s foster care system depends on grandfamilies. It does little to support their mental health needs.

From Mountain State Spotlight

After her son was grown, police would wake Judy Utley in the middle of the night and ask her to take in her two grandchildren and their two half-siblings.

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‘They’re all damaged.’ Despite progress, West Virginia is still failing to get foster kids the mental health help they need

From Mountain State Spotlight

By the time Sadie Kendall turned 18 and aged out of West Virginia’s foster care system, she had lived in more than two dozen places.

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Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response

For the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

At least 40 Native American residents of sober living homes and treatment facilities in the Phoenix area died as state Medicaid officials struggled to respond to a massive fraud scheme that targeted Indigenous people with addictions.

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Former staff at Spokane youth psychiatric unit blame Providence for closure

For InvestigateWest

Early last year, Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane painted a bleak picture of what would happen without its Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents.

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Some Oklahoma parents turn kids over to the state after struggling to get mental health care for them

From The Frontier

Tucked between a highway and railroad tracks just east of Tulsa’s downtown, the county’s only emergency youth shelter acts as a temporary home for some teenagers who have been abandoned by their parents and have nowhere else to go.

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Lack of oversight, coordination hinder efforts to reform Arizona’s rise in maternal mortality

From the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

In 2019, federal officials dedicated more than $2 million to Arizona’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee as part of a national effort to confront alarmingly high rates of maternal deaths. The funding came with a mandate: Strengthen Arizona’s process for analyzing the cases of women who die during and shortly after pregnancy, and find ways to prevent future casualties.

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‘Not knowing where to go’: Montana’s sparse landscape for alcohol detox

From Montana Free Press

Thirty-three-year-old Whitefish resident Melanie Seefeldt has decided to stop drinking before. But, like many Montanans, Seefeldt knows a core truth about alcohol addiction. Wanting to stop is the easy part.

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Gaps in mental health training, rural access to care compound Arizona’s maternal mortality crisis

From Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

Within hours of giving birth to her first child, Araceli Aquino-Valdez was engulfed by an intense sadness. She sobbed for days after arriving home, grieving the loss of her life before motherhood and feeling dismissed by her care providers.

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Two road signs in Tatums, Oklahoma. One reads "TATUMS: The friendly people make the difference," and the other "Tatums, Okla: Home of T-Okie."

Black farmers face specific, outsized challenges in rural mental health crisis

From NPR affiliate KOSU

Oklahoma State Highway 7 runs by the Mary T. Tatums Municipal Building in one of Oklahoma’s historic All-Black towns, Tatums.

Bonnie Hooks sits with her neighbors at one of the round tables inside the building. Like her grandmother, Hooks is a farmer in Tatums, where she raises pigs.

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